[barsonme]

It should be noted 'free speech' is the reason you can have this conversation in the first place.

You can't have your cake and eat it too. That is, if you wish to not have your opinions censored you cannot ask for the censorship of other opinions you feel offensive.

I wish bigots and other prejudiced people would spare us, but I value my freedom to speak my mind more than I dislike hearing hateful speech.

[sclv]

There's no free speech on hackernews. People get moderated all the time! If hackernews can moderate its comments, then can't a conference moderate its speakers?

[barsonme]

Big distinction -- people are moderated for their content on Hacker News, not off.

If this speaker makes a racial slur he'll likely be removed from the conference. Inside the conference (much like HN) they're free to limit his speech. However, as was mentioned in the article, the conference does not and will not judge speech outside the conference, much like HN does not (to my knowledge) ban users for offensive speech outside HN.